Israel’s cell-phone assassinations in Iran is John Kiriakou’s account of how Israel destroyed Iran’s military leadership. It killed all 12 of Iran’s top generals by targeting their cell phones — and gathered the intelligence by recruiting some of the two million undocumented Afghan refugees living destitute in Iran, paying $50 to $100 a month to learn when each general left his apartment and which way he went.[1][2] When Iran realized what was happening and forbade its generals to carry phones, Israel targeted the bodyguards’ phones instead, killing the next wave of leaders.[3] Kiriakou says Israel similarly eliminates Iranian nuclear scientists — recruiting them or, if they refuse, killing them by drone or by assassins abroad.[4]
Kiriakou has repeated and expanded on this account elsewhere. He says Mossad has effectively blanket coverage of Iran, intercepting all Iranian communications — including military and leadership traffic — and has infiltrated the country on the ground using Farsi-native Iranian Jewish emigres who moved to the West and were sent back.[5] He gives a more specific mechanism for the phone-tracking recruitment: because Iran, itself strained by sanctions, offers Afghan refugees no state benefits — no free food, housing, or medical care — Israel approached them directly, paying $300 to $500 a month for a general’s or scientist’s home address, departure time, and daily route.[6] In another telling, Kiriakou describes Israel successfully recruiting desperate, deported Afghan illegal aliens inside Iran for around $50 a tip to identify the same locations.[7] He also says Israel uses Iranian-born Jews who speak fluent, accentless Farsi to identify the specific apartment blocks where Iranian nuclear scientists live, before striking with a rocket — killing everyone in the building if necessary.[8] Kiriakou adds that Israeli hackers separately broke into Tehran’s traffic cameras, letting them watch generals and scientists driving through the city and know exactly where they would be at what time — “and that’s when you rocket them. It’s good tradecraft is what it is.”[9] Separately, Kiriakou says Israeli intelligence can break encryption faster than the United States, and that the FBI will sometimes contract encryption-breaking work out to Israel, which retains the intercepted data.[10]